Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (17 page)

Now nothing moved in the parking lot.

Chang accelerated the reverse. After an hour of surveillance footage had sped by in two minutes, the conclusion was obvious.

“Sir, the driver was already in the Crown Victoria. I should have swept the lot with infrared.”

Lyle was already speed-dialing Roz.

“Hey, boss.”

“Road trip.”

“Roger that.”

Lyle’s right knee clicked audibly when he stood. “You’re here till the shift change. Keep the doors locked.”

Chang patted the sidearm resting beside his log book. “Good to go, sir.”

“Let’s hope not.” Lyle opened the back door and stepped into the night with relief. As hot as it was, it was cooler than in the van. A large jet
roared by overhead, on an approach vector, landing lights captured in cones of glowing mist. Automatically, Lyle ID’d the twin-engined plane as an Airbus 319. He was good with planes.

Lyle donned his installer’s ball cap before looking across the street to the warehouse lot. There were still lights on in unit 5. That one was leased by the owner of the Crown Victoria—Vince Gilden, who ran a used bookstore in Mays Landing and had rented this unit two weeks ago, apparently to house extra stock. As a matter of course, Lyle had had a full profile run on Gilden, but the man checked out. Lyle made a note to revisit that.

Under a minute later, a black Intrepid turned the corner, stopped by the van, and Lyle got into the passenger side. Roz was at the wheel. She had a big grin for him.

“We going to follow him?”

Lyle tapped the nonstandard navigation screen in the center of the dash. The moving dot on the web of streets was Weir. A smaller, inset map showed the Intrepid’s current position.

“No, we’re going to follow whoever else is following him.”

Roz was intrigued. “That’s different. Has he got another agency tailing him?” Like every other member of his team, she liked to be in the middle of action, the wilder the better.

“Doubtful. I think it’s the book dealer. Gilden.” Lyle fastened his seat belt and rocked back as Roz took off.

“A civilian following our guy? Something’s up.”

“Unfortunately.”

Lyle touched his own sidearm in his shoulder holster for reassurance. It had been years since he had used it anywhere but on the qualifying range—but that, like all things so far in this case, could change.

Waiting at a red light with no other cars on the road, David was tempted to call the radio station he was listening to and start a debate about what should be done about nonhumans walking among us. Just to see how quickly they’d hang up on him.

The light turned green. By habit, he checked the road left and right. Up ahead. Behind—

In his rearview mirror, he saw a car at the side of the road, maybe two hundred feet back, with its parking lights on. He’d just driven past that spot, and no car had been there.

He started forward.

In his rearview mirror, he saw the other car edge onto the road, its headlights still off.

For a few moments, David lost sight of the other vehicle as the road
ahead curved. When it straightened, the car was there again, hanging back. Headlights now on.

He was being followed.

Either he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and he was a random target, or he was in the right place at the right time for someone interested just in him.

That decision tree was simple. Nothing he could do about army investigators. Even if he managed to elude them tonight, they’d be back. Casual crime? That was different. He had options.

David changed his choice of destination. This early in the morning, McDonald’s wouldn’t have enough people to deter a mugging or carjacking. He flicked on his blinker. He’d take the Atlantic City Expressway back to the Holiday Inn and drive right into the well-lit lobby drop-off. Good-bye mugger.

He made the next turn. The expressway overpass was clearly visible in the distance, its entrance and exit lanes picked out in lights.

He rechecked his mirror.

The car was still behind him.

A flash of lightning, then window-rattling thunder.

Up ahead slow-flashing orange lights smeared into halos on the windshield of the Jeep, and David pumped the brakes. The lights flanked signs warning that the expressway’s entrance ramps were closed. Other signs pointed to the next closest entrance.
Great.
Another five miles on deserted surface roads.

He drove on past the blocked ramps, under the overpass.

Then the Jeep died. Engine, headlights, windshield wipers, radio. All out. David coasted to the shoulder. The Jeep came to a full stop.

A strobe of lightning, another roll of thunder. He looked in the rearview mirror. Saw no other car. Had the same thing happened to it?

David put on the emergency brake, pressed the hazard light button. Nothing. He took a small penlight from the glove compartment and switched it on. At least that worked.

He got out, grateful for the overpass above him sheltering him from the rain. On the off chance a battery cable had come loose, or something equally repairable, he pulled the hood up, confident he knew this engine well—4 liter, 6 cylinder, 12 valve, 190 horsepower. He could usually diagnose almost any trouble with it just from the way it sounded. Working on his Jeep was the closest thing he had to a hobby—doing something mechanical never failed to clear his mind.

Penlight in mouth, David peered into the engine compartment. The battery cables were still in place. He tugged each one to be certain they
were tight. Then stopped. A small twist of red and black wire was where it didn’t belong, running beside the bundled wires coming up from the alternator.

David took the penlight from his mouth and aimed it at the wires. Three possibilities instantly came to mind: tracking beacon, bomb, or remote kill-switch.

A new sound bounced off the concrete pilings of the underpass. The echo of a car approaching.

David straightened up, recognizing the configuration of the headlights and the parking lights. The other car.

It slowed, then pulled up behind his Jeep, motor idling.

David stayed where he was, penlight shining onto the battery cables. He had a flash where he visualized his situation in the same way he did arrangements of genes and chromosomes—as if looking down from above. Saw his Jeep. The other car. Himself beside the Jeep. The door of the other car opening—

“Having trouble?”

The driver stood behind his open door, a silhouette in the glare of headlights. The voice was familiar.

“I think the rain shorted out something,” David said.

He heard the echo of another car. Coming from the opposite direction, driving slowly.

“Need a lift to a gas station?”

The driver was walking toward him. David recognized his face, didn’t know his name.

“I’m Vince Gilden, by the way. You’re David, right? We’re neighbors. Back at the warehouse. I just moved into a unit at the back. We’ve said hello.”

“The guy with all the books.”

The driver smiled. “That’s me.”

David nodded, pulse steady but hammering in his ears. He’d only said hello in passing. He’d never said his name.

The second car was drawing nearer.

“Let me try one thing first,” David said. He pocketed his penlight, throwing the Jeep’s engine compartment into shadow. “Could you brace this?”

“Sure.” Gilden put his hand on the Jeep’s hood, at the same time darting a glance back at the car that was almost up to them. “Like this?”

“Perfect. Now here, hold this for me.”

Gilden held out his hand, and David shoved the positive battery cable into it.

There was a sudden strangled cry, and sparks crackled from Gilden’s hands as his body completed the circuit through the Jeep’s metal frame and he flew back into the roadway.

By then, David was already halfway up the steep concrete embankment leading from the road to the overpass. The surface of the concrete was untouched by the evening’s rain, and his Nikes gave him sufficient traction. He slammed to a stop behind a four-foot-wide piling, slowed his breathing, listening.

Heard two car doors open.

The second car. Samaritans? Or Gilden’s “friends”?

He got his answer when an unfamiliar voice called out, “David Weir! We only want to talk!”

David stayed where he was. Whoever they were, they’d disabled his car. They could have talked to him at the warehouse.

Then voices, too faint to catch the words. The sound of a car trunk opening, closing.

“Weir!”

A powerful flashlight beam slashed over the concrete. David instinctively shrank back, but in the deep shadows of the piling, he was already shielded from the light.

“Come down,” a different voice shouted, “or we come up after you!”

So there were three of them. No, two, David corrected himself. It was doubtful Gilden would be moving anytime soon.

“Last chance, Weir!”

David hesitated. The CID would never snatch him on a roadway in the middle of the night. Copying restricted personnel data from the lab’s computers wouldn’t warrant that kind of tactic. This had to be a case of mistaken identity. These people had him confused with someone else.

David began to dial 911. This was something the police could clear up.

A shotgun blast hit the overpass ten feet to his left, spraying him with stinging debris and dust.

For an instant, David thought he’d been shot. Then a series of images flooded his brain. Vivid snapshots. In one he was frozen in place behind the concrete piling, phone in one hand. In the next he was leaping from behind the piling. Racing up the embankment on the perfect angle. Tucking, rolling, dropping down to safety farther beneath the overpass.

Another shotgun blast.

Car tires squealing, voices shouting.

David rolled off the concrete, scanning the slippery grass slope leading up to the expressway.

He heard the rush of traffic overhead, wet tires on the asphalt. The rain intensifying. Lightning flashing.

He ran along the shoulder of the highway, waving for someone, anyone, to stop and help him.

Three cars roared past, splashing through pools of water, the spray soaking him.

A fourth car slid to a stop just past him and honked its horn. Its roof sported a lighted sign of smiling showgirls. A casino ad.

David ran to the cab, pulled the back door open, and jumped in, twisting around to squint through the fogged rear window at a rain-blurred stream of cars. No other car had pulled off behind them.

“Closest police station!” he yelled through the Plexiglas security screen. “Go!” Then he was thrown back as the cab accelerated so quickly it fishtailed and the side door slammed shut beside him.

He felt exhilarated. He was going to be okay. He’d never responded so quickly in his life. Then again, he’d never been shot at before.

That’s when he finally saw the front-seat passenger. Half turned around, feeding a flexible tube through the payment slot in the security screen.

The tube was hissing.

“That’s long enough,” Lyle said. Weir’s beacon hadn’t changed position for two minutes—longer than any red light or traffic slowdown this time of night.

Roz slammed the black Intrepid into gear and pulled back onto the road. The car’s rain-slicked tires spun for a moment, then gripped pavement, and they were off, flying through a red light—no other traffic on the road. Amber warning lights flashed ahead. “Ramp’s closed,” she said. “He might’ve been heading to the expressway after all.”

The beacon had changed direction a few miles back. It was no longer tracing Weir’s customary route to the closest McDonald’s. Now it had stopped. Either the kid had noticed they were shadowing him or he was meeting someone. Lyle liked neither scenario. “I’m thinking he caught a ride.”

“No way.”

Lyle lamented the loss of conversational skill among his younger colleagues.
But, when in Rome . . .
“Yes, way,” he said. “Gilden didn’t know about our surveillance. If he wants to harm the kid, he could have done that at the warehouse. He’s picked him up.”

“What for?”

“To take him someplace, Roz.”

They were heading into the curve of road protected by the expressway overpass. “Should be just ahead on the right.”

A car loomed toward them. Too fast for the road conditions. Low and black. High beams flicked on, distorted in the rain.

“License!” Lyle barked.

Roz squinted ahead as the car rushed forward. “Lima Echo Delta—damn! Missed the numbers.” She repeated the letters, added, “New Jersey plates. Black Bentley Continental. Sweet.”

Lyle saw the Jeep. “Pull over.”

Roz slipped in behind Weir’s car. Lyle opened his door and stepped out, gun drawn. On the other side, Roz followed his lead.

The air was damp, cooling, but couldn’t hide the scent of gunsmoke.

Lyle edged forward. He saw Roz sniff the air. She dropped one hand from her gun to pull a flashlight from her jacket, held it up like a dagger, shone it into the Jeep.

“Clear inside.”

Lyle saw her crouch down. The flashlight beam shot out past the Jeep’s tires.

“Clear underneath.”